Description: The Heron is a long endurance, medium-altitude, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with fully automatic landing and takeoff features. It provides wide-area, real-time intelligence to national agencies, theater commanders and lower echelons operating from deep inside enemy territory. The Heron is able to accommodate up to 250 kg of intelligence payloads with flight endurance of 52 hours.

The Heron UAV and its payload are controlled via a line-of-sight and beyond line-of-sight (using an airborne platform to relay the data) datalinks. If datalink loss, the Heron UAV returns to its home base autonomously. Plans exists to integrate a satellite datalink on the Heron UAV. In addition, the Heron UAV can perform autonomous flight without datalink the aircraft and the control station when required.

The Heron UAV can accommodate Infrared/CCD-TV, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and marine patrol radar payloads in accordance with the mission profile. It was selected by EADS as the basis for the Eagle/EUROMALE Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAV program.

In September 20005, IAI was awarded a $50 million contract for the supply of additional Heron (Machatz 1 Israel Armed Forces designation) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the Israel Air Force (IAF). The Machatz 1 aerial vehicles on order can load multiple sensors such as maritime search radar, synthetic aperture radar, COMINT (Communications Intelligence) and ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) systems. An automatic launch and recovery system and all-weather capabilities are the most relevant features of IAF's Machatz 1 aerial vehicles.